The most interesting matchups of the season, chronologically.
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If the new Big East came of age post-Miami with West Virginia's blitzkrieg over Georgia in the 2005/06 Sugar Bowl, its sudden, surprising maturity risks becoming a short-lived footnote on the long term slide toward irrelevance everyone predicted when the Canes and Virginia Tech split five years ago. Not to be too dramatic about it, but as quickly as West Virginia and Louisville shot into the top ten, the stars and architects of their respective surges are moving on to more lucrative, traditionally prestigious grounds, leaving perennial doormat Rutgers, Wannstedt-led Pittsburgh and upstart South Florida positioned as the league's future bellwethers, programs that have netted roughly five combined weeks of national relevance over the last three decades. Already, Louisville has faded from its perch, lost its face as a high-powered menace to scoreboards and descended to its historic, mediocre norm.

But right now, still riding the wave from that upset in the Sugar Bowl, West Virginia has a chance. 2008 is, for now, not only Mountaineers' last legitimate hope to contend for a mythical championship in the near future, but the conference's, as well. Not to knock the legs from underneath West Virginia -- indeed, the most successful program without a national title, and proprietor of a pair of to-the-wire championship runs in the fifteen years prior to Rich Rodriguez's arrival, in 1988 and 1994 -- but WVU's middle-of-the-pack recruiting unearthed unprecedented lodes of hidden platinum when it landed Pat White and Steve Slaton, who happened to be the perfect cogs for Rodriguez's self-styled system at just the moment the conference became ripe for exploitation; it struck it rich again when its gamble on grades risk Noel Devine paid off last year. These pieces seemed so perfectly aligned -- like a comet, or the sun hitting the the top of Indy's staff in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the delicate petals of the Bakawali flower, which bloom spectacularly for three hours before dying -- that I was certain Rodriguez's cold feet toward the Alabama job in December 2006 was his realization that his best chance for the rare championship run was now, in Morgantown, and it was fleeting. The devastation of the loss to Pittsburgh last December, and the toxic  reaction  to it, may have convinced him that window had closed.

Most people might have agreed with him before his old team pulled the same quick-striking shiv on unsuspecting Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl it had unleashed on Georgia two years earlier. With Rodriguez in Michigan and Slaton on the bench, West Virginia officially became Pat White's team, and punched its ticket to one last go at the crystal ball before White moves on and the post-Rod era begins in earnest.

In that context, Auburn represents the high profile victim the Mountaineers have yet to fell until it's too late -- the impressive wins over Georgia and Oklahoma were sort of postcript validations, but their only contribution to a national championship was in the initial polls the following years. They were setups. If 2008 is finally the followthrough, with a Cardinal-sized void in the vaalue of running the table in the Big East, another high progile BCS victim is required. Colorado and South Florida are nice but routine in the big picture, merely necessary wins for the sake of not losing.

Auburn, on the other hand, on national TV, on Thursday night, in front of one of the wilder under-70,000 crowds anywhere, has to be the that big head on the wall, over the mantel. Otherwise, the occasion is a elegy for the high-end potential of the most successful run in West Virginia history -- perhaps in any endeavor save seceding from the stinking rich Confederates to the east. Another month of conference wins over the respectable-yet-dismissible likes of UConn, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pitt and USF will not close the gap created by blowing the one big shot against the mighty SEC at home.

It's harder to peg exactly where Auburn will be on Oct. 23 -- the Tigers are lurkers in the top ten, nobody's idea of a serious championship aspirant, but if they survive at home against LSU (a series dominated by the home team for the last decade) and Tennessee in back-to-back weeks, they should be 7-0 heading into Morgantown, and the pregame decibel level in that case might reach a record crescendo for a Thursday night affair.

That may not be likely, and anyway, West Virginia is not the culmination of Auburn's season in the way AU is for WVU. This trip, too, is only a setup, a necessary win to raise the stakes for the closing gambit against Georgia, Alabama and, maybe, the East champion in the SEC Championship. It's a destination and a turning point for West Virginia, for good or ill, but just another way station for the Tigers -- albeit a particularly cold, fast, hostile one, and one their BCS ambitions may not survive.

A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason. By popular demand.
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What’s Changed. Maybe because its takes a year to establish players who don’t completely dominate, Matt Flynn probably didn’t get enough credit for his role in last year’s offense, which itself was largely underrated because of the talent on defense and its tendency to spread the ball around to quality non-stars. But the Tigers topped 30 points eleven times, and 40 points seven times, and Flynn was the unsung hero of both the gut-wrenching stretch of comeback wins over Florida, Auburn and Alabama (especially the latter two, when he passed for three touchdowns and went over 300 yards in both games, and twice brought the team back from the brink) and the championship win over Ohio State, where he threw four touchdowns, completed 70 percent of his passes and was virtually flawless in keeping the sticks moving; for once, the quarterback was denied an MVP he deserved.

The depth around him didn’t necessarily pick up the slack when Flynn didn’t play well, either; it did against Florida and South Carolina, two of his worst games as a passer, but not at Kentucky or Arkansas, where Flynn completed less than half of his passes and finished with a pair of dreadful efficiency ratings, or in the SEC Championship, where the offense scored a season-low 14 points with Flynn watching -- the defense had to provide the decisive score.

So if Flynn was "just a manager" with many options at his disposal, he fit the role very well, he was money in close games, and Jimbo Fisher’s system ran primarily through him. It’s hard to see that being the case with Jarrett Lee or Andrew Hatch, aka "Green and Greener." It would be nice to combine the two: Lee is physically gifted, the No. 7 incoming QB in the country last year by Rivals, but has no experience whatsoever, and isn’t the talent Perrilloux would have been; the only thing anyone knows about Hatch is that he’s a transfer from Harvard, and therefore presumably longer on brains than arm strength. Yeah, viva la stereotype, but he didn’t vanquish Lee in the spring, or vice versa. The massive, experienced offensive line and sheer volume of the running game -- Keiland Williams, Richard Murphy and Charles Scott are all 20-carry guys, if necessary, and all averaged way over six per carry behind Jacob Hester last year -- will carry the offense a long way, but it’s not like there’s any chance of becoming ‘95 Nebraska here: if the quarterback is too mistake-prone or doesn’t have the arm to challenge elite defenses down the field, one-dimensional won’t win any championships.

What’s the Same. It’s not fair, really, that LSU can lose one of the most dominating linemen of the decade and still field a near-impenetrable front four, but they collect unblockable defensive linemen here like Louisiana politicians collect kickbacks: the Tigers bring back not only first rate ends Tyson Jackson and Kirston Pittman, who both should be (but can’t be) double-teamed at all times, and Marlon Favorite on the inside, but also junior tackle Al Woods, a thoroughbred recruit in ‘06 and oft-deployed nuisance off the bench who no one would be surprised to see eventually dominate the league on a Dorsey-esque level as a full-time starter -- if he can manage to hold off Ricky Jean-Francois, suspiciously-deployed secret weapon of the mythical championship game after missing the entire regular season to suspension. Senior/’07 injury casualty Charles Alexander actually came out of the spring listed in front of both Woods and Favorite at one of the tackles, as if the order really matters; ex-blue chips Rahim Alem, Pep Levingston and Tremaine Johnson all notched at least one sack and multiple tackles for loss last year. It’s unseemly, man.

"Max protect" does not adequately describe the necessary precaution to protect quarterbacks here, and with Darren McFadden and Felix Jones out of the picture, there’s not much question about its sturdiness against the run. But the Tigers are likely to ask for more pressure from the front four alone -- Bo Pellini was an aggressive, frequent blitzer (a dozen sacks each of the last two years came from the back seven), which new co-coordinators Doug Mallory and Bradley Dale Peveto may not be, especially without the luxury of two veteran corners who could be trusted in man-to-man, which Pellini had in Jonathan Zenon and Chevis Jackson. There are nothing but raves about incoming Patrick Johnson, by all accounts the top cornerback recruit in the country, but no coach has ever slept well after thinking, "Can’t wait till the freshmen get here."

Large Men Who Know What They’re Doing. Gary Crowton has a history as a pass-oriented play-caller and didn’t hesitate to get the Tigers’ talented receivers on the field in spread sets last year, but LSU was a power running team at heart -- the Tigers ran a little over 58 percent of the time, mostly straight ahead with Hester. So Crowton doesn’t need issues at quarterback to convince him to pound it with his big backs.

It must also help to have a line with four returning starters, three of them -- Ciron Black, man-mountain Herman Johnson and Bret Helms -- for the third consecutive year. Add Lyle Hitt, who started all but the first game last year in place of injured would-be all-American Will Arnold, and the returnees have logged 93 career starts between them, with no substantial injuries. Johnson was first team all-SEC by the coaches last year; Black was second team. Really, the new quarterback will not have to worry about much: whether one guy assumes the lion’s share of the work at tailback or they spend another year doing the committee thing, this is still the most punishing running game in the conference, if it needs to be.

Overly Optimistic Post-Spring Chatter. Richard Murphy dominated the spring game and went a long way to pushing Keiland Williams for playing time in the backfield, but safety Chad Jones created a buzz just by showing up:

Just two weeks after declaring, at LSU baseball's media day, that baseball remained, "his first love," Jones has left the diamond to focus exclusively on football for the remainder of spring practices, head football coach Les Miles said Tuesday. Jones will rejoin the baseball team in April after the spring game.

Jones' move, which Miles said was baseball coach Paul Mainieri's idea, became possible when he lost out on the starting right fielder's job to fellow freshman Leon Landry. Landry is off to a hot start at the plate and playing solidly in the field so it was unlikely Jones would be anything other than a pinch hitter and occasional starter at this point.
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LSU’s other two-sport guys, Trindon Holliday and Jared Mitchell, remained busy with track and baseball, respectively, but neither is expected to have the kind of impact Jones will as a starting safety in place of Craig Steltz -- judging from his recruiting hype and freshman contribution (he returned punts, made 35 tackles, picked off a pass at Kentucky and created the decisive fumble at Alabama), he likely won’t be a dropoff there at all. It’s a little reassurance, if nothing else: Jones almost passed up football altogether to play minor league ball last year, but now it seems his "first love" has become his second priority.

LSU on You Tube. I remember the LSU-Florida game in 1997 very specifically, mainly because I was out of range of cable TV, disconnected enitrely, but still sure enough of a win by the No. 1 Gators that I didn’t think I was missing anything. Until, that is, someone around with a radio started relaying the score. We were home in time to see the ending, thankfully -- though this version criminally omits Jevon Kearse’s unflagged late hit on Herb Tyler, which is really all that endures:

Two years after the Nebraska debacle, you’d think the Gators would have learned to defend a little option -- and that someone else would have tried it.

See Also: tour of LSU’s campus, and then a guide according to Aphex Twin. ... And, of course, the final drive of the 1988 game against Auburn.

Best-Case: As a whole, this team is at least as good as last year’s on paper, with the notable exception of quarterback, Assuming feisty Appalachian State broke the Cinderella bank last year at Michigan, the non-conference slate doesn’t even rise to the level of a cakewalk (paired with Troy, North Texas and Tulane, the I-AA team is probably the toughest of the lot), the Tigers’ season essentially comes down to three games in a six-week span: at Auburn, at Florida and vs. Georgia in Baton Rouge. Arkansas is way, way down, and completely lacking the weapons that pushed the Tiger defense the last two years; whatever optimism surrounds Mississippi State (LSU’s taken eight straight and 15 of the last 16 against MSU), South Carolina (three straight and 6 of 8 since 1982) and Ole Miss (six straight and 7 of the last 8), those teams’ talent levels remain well below LSU’s class. Alabama, too, has lost five in a row and seven of the last eight in the series. It’s a very good bet the iffy quarterback situation will cost the Tigers one of the road games at Auburn or UF, but if the defense and running game can grind out one of those away from home and the offense is in-sync by the time Georgia comes to town, LSU can be right back in the SEC and mythical championship pictures with one loss.

Worst-Case: LSU could afford something like the Perrilloux situation at any other position -- at running back, wide receiver, defensive line, linebacker and in the secondary, there just more stars waiting behind the current ones. But uncertainty at quarterback is a different sort of problem: if one or the other fails to take hold of the job, the whole ship can veer off course. A sketchy offense that takes two months to find itself will wake up 0-3 against Auburn, Florida and Georgia and out of the conference championship race before November. Last year’s letdowns to Kentucky and Arkansas also suggest a certain vulnerability to competent snipers, like South Carolina or Alabama (which led well into the fourth quarter against LSU last year), or even Ole Miss, which has a recent history of playing the Tigers tough and should be much better under Houston Nutt, who also has a good track record vs. LSU. It’s the loss that shouldn’t have been that will make an 8-4 season seem like a real disappointment, with a stopover in the Bowl Formerly Known as the Peach before reloading for ‘09.

Non-Binding Forecast: Back to the Doorstep or Bust. The SEC hasn’t had a repeat champion in a decade. Nine wins is virtually assured; it’s the "big three," and especially the annual West rubber match with Auburn, that will stand as the divider between this two-loss regular season and the first three two-loss regular seasons under Miles, which -- while eerily similar on the field -- produced dramatically different results in terms of perceived success. Ten-and-two in 2005 bought a West title but not an SEC championship or BCS bid, or even a January bowl game; 10-2 in 2006 was only good for second in the West but got the Tigers into the BCS; and 11-2 last year was good enough not only for division and conference championships, but, against all precedent for two-loss teams, a mythical championship shot, of which they took full advantage. Those teams weren’t really very different from one another, and this one isn’t, either -- the spoils depend not on whether it will lose, but to whom.

This time, only because of the situation at quarterback, I’m assuming a one-for-three effort against the "big three." The trip to Auburn is the first early test for a young QB, in a venue where LSU hasn’t won since 1998, against the Brother Oliver-led band of Terry Bowden’s orphans (the home Tigers have won every game this decade). A loss there, and a split against UF-UGA, probably dooms LSU to the Cotton Bowl or Bowl Formerly Known as the Citrus despite another 10-2 regular season. A win over Auburn, even with a pair of losses to the East teams, probably gets the Tigers to Atlanta for a rematch with the Florida-Georgia winner...where, given the competition for the SEC’s second at-large spot in the BCS, a loss probably dooms them to the Cotton Bowl or Bowl Formerly Known as the Citrus. I call this section "non-biding" for a reason, but for now, I’ll call LSU the best team destined for the bittersweet cold of New Year’s morning.

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A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason. By popular demand.
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What’s Changed. The quarterback, significantly, but more significant are persistent rumors of a move to something PSU partisans have dubbed the "Spread HD," a spread/read option look that quarterbacks coach/passing game coordinator/despised son Jay Paterno hinted at in January for the sake of keeping up with the Rodriguezes, but which was also a no-show in the spring game. The new quarterback and new system are intrinsically tied: in Daryll Clark, PSU sees Michael Robinson, former receiver-turned-scrambling savior and unlikely H*i*m*n finalist in 2005, without whom the near-miracle Big Ten championship doesn’t happen that year and the general sense of malaise that’s steadily crept over the program for eight years -- even Northwestern has an identical record in Big Ten games since 2003 -- becomes all-consuming. Clark was impressive on half a dozen carries against Texas A&M in the Alamo Bowl, his only significant, game-in-doubt playing time, but he only attempted one pass there (an incompletion), and even in completing four of five in garbage time against Ohio State only had 13 yards -- 3.25 per completion.

But Robinson wasn’t a great passer, either; if the spread is in order, it would seem to be to take advantage of Clark’s athleticism and hope the excess attention to the extra running threat and the availability of the most experienced receiving corps in the history of college football (see below) will help the rest fall into place. This might be like hoping lightning strikes twice -- at 6’2", 230, Clark is built more like a pocket guy or a fullback than a scrambler, and his reputed 40-time, for what it’s worth, is not very impressive -- but at least there is a precedent.

For fans, anyway, the association with Robinson might be the biggest difference between Clark and Pat Devlin, who they haven’t seen much more of but whose highly-recruited pedigree and statuesque frame veer a little too close to Anthony Morelli for comfort. Devlin is ostensibly the "status quo" guy -- he’s not going to be taking off very much out of the shotgun, or not successfully, anyway -- an assurance of three more years of diminishing returns from the conservative, power-running philosophy that’s only flourished lately when a special player like Robinson or Larry Johnson circa 2002 is in tow (the Lions finished second in the Big Ten in scoring in ‘02 and ‘05, but haven’t been better than fifth any other season this decade). Admittedly, both LJ and MR were surprises in their last year after a couple seasons as role players on very bad teams (which may or may not say something about the philosophy here in itself), but with no apparent stars of that caliber in this group, the same old thing would seem almost like giving up on competing for a championship.

What’s the Same. Penn State doesn’t have much left in the skill department, but it’s lines, oy, the Lions are going to be tough in the trenches. This is nothing new on defense, where PSU’s finished in the top ten in rushing defense, scoring defense and sacks three years in a row, and in the top fifteen in total defense; it’s also the only defense to allow less than three yards per carry each of the last three years. Even in 2004, a dismal, 4-7 disaster due to a futile wreck of an offense, they were fifth in points allowed. Penn State has almost never not been generally outstanding on defense under Tom Bradley, even if you remove misleading dominance against bottom-dwelling non-conference fodder (the offenses from Florida International, Notre Dame and Temple combined for three points and one yard rushing last year, for example), and there’s no reason to expect anything but more of the same with four regulars back on the front line, including Maurice Evans, who exploded as a sophomore with 21.5 tackles for loss, and Ollie Ogbu, who had another ten TFLs from the inside as a redshirt freshman. Those are fairly obscene numbers -- especially by Evans, who obviously drew more attention at the end of the year -- but they’re not necessary to remain fundamentally solid, as usual.

There are only two possible issues with the run D: a) all-American Dan Connor graduated, and all-American-to-be Sean Lee, the heir apparent in the Posluszny-Connor chain of caucasian linebacking death, blew out his knee in the spring, leaving second-year guys Chris Colasanti and Nate Stupar to assume the mantle a year earlier than expected; and b) the Lions weren’t as monolithically dominating as the overall numbers suggest against actually good running teams: Michigan, Illinois (for the second year in a row), Ohio State and Michigan State all established sustained running games in PSU losses, and Texas A&M had success on the ground in the Alamo Bowl. The Illini were the first team to average five yards per carry over an entire game since early 2004; as a whole, the defense also allowed 30 points three times, which had only happened once (against Notre Dame in 2006) from 2004-06, against balanced, run-first offenses from Indiana, Ohio State and Michigan State. So even if the Lions are never gashed, they’re not impenetrable, either, for physical teams that put them on their heels.

As long as we’re on the trenches, I’d be remiss to ignore the offensive line, which has been considered a weakness here for a couple years but has produced a couple 1,000-yard backs and might be one of the more reliable units in the Big Ten, if there’s anyone worth blocking for. Four starters are back, including all-conference center/three-years starter A.Q. Shipley, and the new guy, Stefen Wisniewski, is the allegedly most promising of the bunch; he was a top ten incoming guard prospect last year and already has the scouts’ attention. If the front remains intact, the power game should remain a very viable option against all but the toughest handful of defenses.

Receivers For Life. Re: the most experienced receiving corps in college football history -- that is probably not true; Virginia Tech graduated four career starters last year, so maybe it just seems like Derrick Williams, Deon Butler and Jordan Norwoood have been around longer than any group of players at one position has any right to. It’s hard to tell exactly how to gauge their careers: all three were big hits as freshman in 2005, they speedy keys to opening up the offense, but then, they’ve done nothing in particular to distinguish themselves over the last two years, and have actually been much less explosive; then again, they’ve been reliable starters and saddled in a run-oriented system with Anthony Morelli and Jay Paterno at the controls. If you were impressed with them out of the box, there’s not much reason to change your mind since:

More consistent, less explosive: not a ringing endorsement, but unless Clark, Devlin and/or a new, more downfield-oriented system gives them a new lease on life, they is what they is. Certainly there are no challengers in sight among the underclassmen.

Overly Optimistic Post-Spring Chatter. Aside from the ever-looming visage of Zombie Joe in the final year of an irrelevant contract, the most pressing concern is the lack of a breakaway threat on the offense, which Williams has not provided as expected after his towering high school hype. One way to do that, they hope, is to move Williams back to the slot, where he played before he was hurt as a freshman. Another way may be to get more than a few carries per game into the hands of spring mover Stephfon Green: if unspectacular Evan Royster is virtually assured the starting role at running back -- a good bet, after he rolled up 500-plus in surprise backup duty after Austin Scott was booted for a (later dropped) rape charge at midseason -- Green stole the show in the spring game, according to a very impressed Mike at Black Shoe Diaries:

We'll be just fine at running back. Evan Royster looked solid as expected. He didn't get much playing time with just three carries, but he gained 24 yards and scored a touchdown on those three carries.

And of course we should probably mention Stephfon Green. I mentioned last week if he takes a pitch and breaks it 60 yards we'll have a full blown running back controversy on our hands. Well, he didn't go 60 yards, but he did go 57 yards on his first carry of the game. I was sitting on the ten yard line on the sideline he broke the run down. I thought Tony Davis had the angle on him to push him out of bounds, but Green ran right by him. The kid is the real deal and he's going to take the Big Ten by surprise this year.
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Stephfon, while sporting a redundantly-spelled first name, was an unheralded, two-star DB recruit from the Bronx last year, exactly the kind of kid Penn State has to hope emerges in the next couple years, until more fast guys with a few more stars by their names aren’t scared away by the cloud-of-dust stereotype and Gerontophobia. For now, he sounds like just a good change of pace with Royster.

Penn State on You Tube. I can’t say if an entire game day in Happy Valley qualifies as an NSFW trek through a gauntlet of flying beer cans, but to be sure, in case you didn’t catch this floating around in October, you might want to avoid wearing opposing colors -- or at least when passing the PSU frat houses:

Oh, those underclassman hijinx! Truly they are the golden days of your life, to be documented so that you may treasure them forever, as well as be easily identified by police. Unless of course you’re from Pittsburgh, in which case it’s just another day at the office, man.

See Also: Simple but effective: Joe Batono. ... An old series no one should mind seeing revived: the Lions take on disastrously-attired West Virginia in 1969, an undefeated season for PSU, as well as in 1988 and 1984, featuring a special cameo. ... A very optimistic intro to the 1979 Sugar Bowl, which didn’t end as well. And just to end on a less sour note, the final minute of the ‘87 Fiesta Bowl.

Best-Case: Oregon State is a solid early test between humiliating (for all involved) romps over Coastal Carolina, Syracuse and Temple, but anything short of 4-0 entering the Big Ten opener with Illinois will be a stunning disappointment and portend doom. The real season starts with the Illini and culminates with trips to Wisconsin and Ohio State in October, with Michigan -- which, while down, has won nine straight over Penn State -- in between. The Lions are 1-3 against that set of teams each of the last two years, and even in one of the wins struggled with the better-than-it-looked Illinois team that finished 2-10 in 2006. They miss potential sniper Northwestern again, but even if PSU avoids another loss to a team from the middle or bottom half of the conference, breaking even against the upper crust would be an improvement. Nobody should challenge Ohio State at the top, but on the strength of their dismantling of the Badgers last year, the Lions might be able to wrest second place from Wisconsin with a road win in Madison and challenge for an at-large BCS bid at 10-2.

Worst-Case: Again, with Oregon State in Happy Valley, anything short of 4-0 would be a disaster beyond realistic pessimism, but the conference slate is frontloaded with Illinois, Purdue, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio State in consecutive weeks. If the offense isn’t up to speed, it could stumble through that stretch and emerge at the other end 1-4, and fighting for its postseason life into November, where at least one quasi-upset -- and maybe two -- awaits among Iowa, Indiana and Michigan State. It’s very plausible to see the offense collapsing into an identity crisis behind two stylistically different but equally flustered young quarterbacks, dropping five or six of eight in the Big Ten, limping into the lowest possible rung of bowl game at 6-6/7-5 and turning up the impatience on Paterno to maximum -- like, boosters loudly clearing their throats in his presence and nodding suggestively to the door. It will get heavy.

Non-Binding Forecast: 'Also Receiving Votes' or Bust. As much as I like the defense, Penn State has been a very mediocre team within the conference the last two years (9-7), and a flatly bad team four of the five years prior to the 2005 moonshot. Ohio State seems well out of reach, as does (in my mind, anyway) Wisconsin, with enough toss-up games through the rest of the schedule -- mainly Illinois, Michigan and Michigan State, all winners over Penn State last year, but also Iowa, Purdue and Indiana -- that breaking even in Big Ten play again and setting off for another Alamo or Champs Sports Bowl with a new quarterback and very little momentum on offense looks right. That may be a sobering lateral step, but it could easily be backwards, so remember the program-threatening abyss of 2000-04 and count your blessings.

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A couple reminders from a pair of all-conference players just how fluid depth charts can be at all times:

Juan Garcia, for example, is not on most of Washington's depth charts heading into the year. If you're not a Washington fan, or otherwise don't remember Garcia as the second-team all-Pac Ten center last year -- one of two Huskies selected by the coaches at all, less than any other team -- you might remember his hardcore/hard luck path to success, as chronicled last month by ex-Post-Intelligencer scribe Ted Miller for the Worldwide Leader: in short, Garcia was the child of Mexican immigrants, itinerate fruit pickers, who joined a gang, briefly dropped out of high school, cleaned up his act, struggled to get his grades in order, was arrested for running from and then flipping a police officer to the ground in an encounter over underage drinking, injured his ankle and then his shoulder early in his UW career, yet still returned to win the starting job and the team's Academic Excellence award in 2006, eventually starting 25 straight games and being voted team captain by the end of last year.

In other words, Garcia is a huge, potentially dangerous man who made the conscious decision to channel his violent fury into a productive outlet that could put him in the highest tax bracket in another year or so, instead of in prison. He's one of the guys who really wants to play football, and needs it, so it's good news for him and the Huskies and maybe whatever sense of cosmic justice we need to think exists that the allegedly career-ending foot injury he suffered in the spring might not keep him out past UW's typically hellish opening stretch against Oregon, BYU and Oklahoma, if that:

Washington center Juan Garcia, who initially feared his career might be over when he suffered a serious foot injury during spring practice in April, said Wednesday he thinks he could be ready to return by mid-to-late September.

"It's way ahead of schedule," Garcia said, adding that he thinks there's a chance he could return "two games into the season."
[...]
Last week, Garcia was finally able to remove a protective boot on the foot and begin walking freely. He hopes to start jogging soon.

Still, the fact that the foot is healing ahead of schedule doesn't mean Garcia can be penciled back into the lineup just yet. The injury is such that any recurrence could put Garcia back to step one, so UW trainers and coaches are sure to be cautious. He said Wednesday that he had pleaded with teammates to let him run a play in a recent voluntary 11-on-11, no-pads workout but that they wouldn't let him.
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Juan Garcia is the kind of guy who actually begs to participate in just a fraction of a random drill in the middle of the offseason, which coaches aren't even around, to the potential detriment of his recovery. He can't stand it.

Completely healthy and recently confident Mike Williams, on the other hand, if the campus Daily Orange is to be believed, can't even be bothered to sign up for the right classes he needs to regain his eligibility:

I just got off the phone with Amy Kremenek, the public relations leader at Onondaga Community College, and she definitively said Mike Williams is not enrolled there. The semester started yesterday, and the registration deadline has already passed.

So what next? The plan was for Williams to take classes at OCC to become academically eligible should he be reinstated by the university. That is no longer an option. Pure speculation here, but I think this virtually ends the Mike Williams era at Syracuse.
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...and thus the Greg Robinson era, as well, as the lanky, high-flying Williams was the only potential positive for the otherwise hopeless Orangemen offense, which cannot protect the quarterback or even consider doing any damage in the running game. Williams is on the Orange's summer depth charts, but will probably do the I-AA thing instead to keep his eligibility and pro hopes alive. He might have been the best receiver in the Big East, regardless of his team's irredeemable suck, if he'd just found the resolve to complete the absolute minimum of what he was asked to do.

The most interesting matchups of the season, chronologically.
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There aren't many teams more vexing from a preseason standpoint than Nebraska, though the stark divide between the Huskers' talent and results under Bill Callahan -- and, honestly, in the last two years of Frank Solich's administration -- has hardly led to much indecision among the summer pronostoscenti. The magazines have not only decreed the Big Red fourth in the Big 12 North; it's a decisive fourth unanimous except for noted contrarian Phil Steele. Kansas and Colorado, less physically gifted teams that nevertheless sent the Huskers home victims of humiliating scoreboard assault last year, are much favored, and none but Steele dares consider NU for the top twenty-five.

Both results are virtually unprecedented in the last 40 years, but they're understandable on the heels of six years of steady underachieving, despite the relatively dreadful recruiting at the end of the Solich era and the potential payoff of the marked upswing in talent under Callahan, whose classes from 2005-07 all rivaled those from Oklahoma and Texas as the best in the conference (according to Rivals), and easily outpaced the rest of the North. Bo Pellini may be walking into a much better-stocked kitchen than Callahan, but until his results pass inspection, skepticism is inevitable.

On the other hand, take Virginia Tech, another team moving forward warily, but for exactly opposite reasons. Where the dichotomy between potential and recent results led to a strongly pessimistic view of Nebraska, the loss of every significant Hokie skill player -- including all of the expected up-and-comers in the spring, who will begin the season on the injured list -- and the core of veteran leadership on the most consistently dominating defense in the country over the last three years has caused barely a ripple in the summer consensus: Tech is a unanimous favorite to win the ACC Coastal, and to finish somewhere in the high teens to low twenties in the final polls.

When you're planning to fight the last war, continuity seems like everything. It trumps talent, ambition and innovation. Continuity is the reason Virginia Tech is expected to look like Virginia Tech more or less always looks, regardless of a red siren lack of experienced personnel. In the same way, the lack of continuity, despite advantages in experience and talent over most of the rest of its conference, dooms Nebraska to another year of stultifying mediocrity, of 'rebuilding,' until the Huskers, too, have reestablished a track record of success in the face of any and all levels of attrition. So thinks Athlon, anyway, which chalks up Nebraska as a near-certain 'W' for Virginia Tech, not even bothering with the courtesy of considering the home team a potential toss-up. That's pretty certain for this time of year.

Given the circumstances, of course, there's nothing certain about either team's prospects, in Lincoln or over the course of the season. In war terms, between the new brain trust at Nebraska and the green troops in Blacksburg, neither army looks the same in strategy or firepower. Expectations -- those holdover assumptions from "the last war," 2007 -- are good for three weeks, in Nebraska's case, through games with Western Michigan, San Jose State and New Mexico State, but the story of the ground gained or lost in 2008 is in complete flux until a real, competent enemy shows up on Sept. 27.

To that point, as through most of the Callahan era, the Big Red is a blank slate. But 4-0 in September, with the program's best win in three years as a jumping-off point for the conference gauntlet, immediately establishes Pellini's Huskers as a revived, hungry threat. If they're feeling confident now, the last thing Missouri and Kansas want to see is the old sleeping giant lifting its weary head on the horizon. Nebraska needs that before Mizzou comes in the following week.

We'll know a little more about the wisdom of the Hokie backers by then, and whether their rhetorical investments in another ten-win season were justified. Tech has division rivals Georgia Tech and North Carolina in the weeks just prior to its Midwest road trip, and the fate of the Coastal might be more or less sealed in those games, whether the Sean Glennon/Tyrod Taylor question is or not. If this is an ambitious team -- which Tech's success since joining the ACC gives it every right to be -- 4-0 entering the Nebraska game is a minimum. Five-and-oh coming out of Lincoln raises the bar another notch, where just meeting expectations is a clear enough warning to cynics who pay too much attention to things like depth charts.

A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason. By popular demand.
- - -

What’s Changed. Cal has a high-flying rep under Jeff Tedford, but the Bears have produced at least a 1,200-yard rusher every year of his tenure and were usually more run-oriented during his first four years -- the 2003 team ran 55 percent of the time, and the 2004 and ‘05 teams both ran on 60 percent of their snaps, a real smashmouth ratio. That’s changed dramatically the last two years, partly because the Bears were no longer averaging six yards per carry (as they did in ‘04 and ‘05), partly because they were in more losing efforts and partly because DeSean Jackson, Lavelle Hawkins and Robert Jordan represented one of the most athletic, experienced and productive receiving corps anywhere. That trio combined for 151 catches and 18 touchdowns in 2006, then went beyond their billing for 184 grabs and 15 scores last year. They were certainly an upgrade over their predecessors: the NFL only took one Cal receiver between 2002 and 2007 (Chase Lyman, whose college career was cut short by injuries and who failed to make even the slightest dent in Saints camp), but took Jackson last year in the second round and Hawkins in the fourth; Jordan signed a free agent deal with the 49ers.

Still, as struggles elsewhere on the offense put a greater strain on their responsibility -- namely, Nate Longshore was playing hurt, again (see below) -- the receivers were far less explosive last year. Jackson averaged 16 yards per catch as a freshman and a truly frightening 18 in ‘06, but only 11.7 in ‘07; Hawkins’ average fell from 15.3 as a first-year JUCO transfer to a pedestrian 11.9. Overall, yards per pass fell by a full yard from ‘06 to ‘07 and the number of big plays plummeted (from 40 in ‘06 to 26 last year, a drop of 35 percent), especially in Pac Ten games. The scoring average fell just below 30 per game, a field goal worse than the previous Tedford era low, in 2003. The balance remained, but it was generally a less explosive outfit as the season wore on, which is shown well in its inability to score more than 23 points in any of the last six regular season games, including clunkers against league bottom dwellers Washington State (a 20-17 win), Washington (a 37-23 loss) and, most inexcusably, Stanford (a 20-13 loss).

The bad news from that perspective is that both the most reliable and most explosive players have all gone on to the pros, and the immediate reserves are not as highly regarded -- though Jordan wasn’t a high profile recruit, Hawkins was a four-star prospect out of junior college and Jackson was the hands-down, must-have receiving star of the class of 2005, whereas expected replacements Jeremy Ross, Michael Calvin and senior LaReyelle Cunningham generated far less hype (and, so far, even less on-field production). If the Bears are looking for a new field-stretching athlete, it’s likely to come from among a group of guys who haven’t taken a snap: Florida transfer/serial legal risk Nyan Boateng or true freshman Marvin Jones. Otherwise, the focus of the attack is likely to shift back to the much-anticipated running of Jahvid Best, or whoever’s next in Tedford’s tailback parade.

What’s the Same. Last year’s defense also happened to be the most generous of Tedford’s tenure in terms of points allowed, and second-most generous in terms of yards; the Bears were last in the Pac Ten in sacks and tackles for loss and a balm for ailing offenses, generally -- six of the last eight opponents scored at or above their season averages against Cal, all but Air Force winners in the process. It wasn‘t pretty by any means:

 

Cal Run Defense

	Yds./Carry	1st Down Runs	10+ Runs	20+ Runs
2005	3.34	85	47	8
2006	3.79	88	46	9
2007	4.01	120	61	17

 

If there’s anything good to add to that, it’s that the guys who did perform, by and large, return: the top seven tacklers, the top five in tackles for loss, five of the top six in sacks. The guys near the front of all of those categories are the linebackers, Worrell Williams, Anthony Felder and Zack Follett, the most statistically impressive of the three (12.5 tackles for loss, ten in the last seven games, and 5.5 sacks) and the only player on the defense deemed fit by Pac Ten coaches for the all-conference team. Those numbers should revert to the mean based on simple probability; if the "senior leadership" cliché means anything, they’ll be better than that. But the goal for now, at minimum, should be back to normal.

If At First You Don‘t Succeed, Tape, Tape Again. If no team has fallen harder than Cal since last October, no player has fallen harder than Nate Longshore, who went from possible early draft entry to possible benchwarmer. Longshore has the size, the arm and, occasionally, a complete grasp of the offense, which has led to some huge afternoons: he threw fifteen total touchdowns in wins over Minnesota, Arizona State, Oregon State and Oregon in a five-week stretch in 2006; went 20 for 24 and threw three touchdowns in a dismantling of UCLA a few weeks later; and put up a pair of two-touchdown, zero-INT efforts in wins over Tennessee and Oregon last September, where he also completed well over 60 percent of his passes in both games.

But Nate, he gets hurt -- in the first game of 2005, which knocked him out for the season; in the sixth game in 2006, which left him limping around with a more serious ankle injury than anyone let on for the rest of the year; in the fifth game last year, with another ankle injury that obviously affected him the rest of the way -- and when he gets hurt, things turn irrevocably south:

 

Nate Longshore, Before and After Injuries

Before	Games	Comp. %	Yds./Att.	TD	INT	Avg. Rating	Pts./Game
2006	6	64.9	8.98	17	5	164.6	39.5
2007	5	63.8	7.4	7	2	134.1	39.4
After	Games	Comp. %	Yds./Att.	TD	INT	Avg. Rating	Pts./Game
2006	7	56.8	7.3	7	8	127.8	27.1
2007	7	54.8	6.5	9	11	101.9	22.3

 

Bear fans are understandably impatient to see the transition to the Kevin Riley era, especially after the then-redshirt freshman atoned for his epic boner against Oregon State by replacing Longshore with the Bears down 21-0 in the Armed Forces Bowl and completely dominating the final three quarters (Riley’s 255.4 efficiency rating in that game is truly off the charts, even against Air Force). It didn’t help that Longshore missed most of spring practice while Riley and Brock Mansion worked to close whatever gap still remains. But there’s every indication that if Longshore actually remains healthy -- and Cal’s line was outstanding in pass protection, first in the Pac Ten and third nationally in fewest sacks allowed -- he’s a well-above average quarterback, in corresponding with the Tedford lineage. That is, if his confidence isn’t completely shot at this point.

Overly Optimistic Post-Spring Chatter. "Confidence," or "chemistry," or some related psychological healing, seemed to be the theme in the spring, where the aftertaste of last year’s collapse remained strong. On a couple of occasions, Zack Follett embraced the "new tone" by backing Tedford’s tough love routine:

"Coach Tedford’s on us harder than he’s ever been," Follett said. "He’s reinforcing ‘Tedford’s Law’ around here. When I first got here, I saw how it was. Then two years went by, and I saw how much lenience was being allowed. He kind of recognized that. That’s the No. 1 change that he’s been making.
- - -

…and calling out some of his departed teammates (DeSean*cough*Jackson*cough cough*):

"(Coach Jeff) Tedford has changed his tone. It’s more of a team-oriented approach now," Cal linebacker Zack Follett told the Contra Costa Times. "Last year a lot of our leaders were stars who were young. They didn’t provide leadership. No disrespect to those guys, but sometimes when you have star athletes, it’s hard to be a coach to those kinds of players."
- - -

Tedford agrees, apparently, having shockingly abandoned play calling duties to new offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti, late of a successful stint at Tedford’s old haunt, Fresno State, and a few less distinguished stops in the NFL. If Tedford the All-Seeing Motivator is actually more effective than Tedford the Master Tacticion/Quarterback Manufacturer -- and that’s a long ’if,’ because Tedford’s been very good in the latter role, the second half of last year notwithstanding -- he might yet re-ascend the ’hot commodity’ throne he briefly rode in 2004-06. But then, if Longshore’s lost the team, somebody’s still gotta do the quarterback thing with Riley, so just when you thought you were out, Jeff…

Cal on YouTube. You can learn about the "aging hippies in the oak trees" from Brent Musburger or from local news footage of the infamous, shrieking Dumpster Muffin or from guerilla footage of protesters talking shit to cops in hopes of stirring up some police violence. Or you can get more sober agitprop straight from the well-organized, professional reactionaries’ mouth:

You can get much more of that angle here, here ("I had some friends go to prison and they had a great time") and here, or just gawk at the naked people. (Re: the above-referenced law against building on a fault, see here).

See Also: After centuries of animosity, the famous Bear-Tree throwdown to end it all in the mid-nineties. … A very strange, uh, tribute to Roy "Wrong Way" Riegels. … And Marshawn Lynch takes a little joyride after the Bears’ overtime win over Washington in 2006.

Best-Case. The running game should be its usual steady self behind Best, which opens up Longshore and/or Riley’s options dramatically. Tedford’s consistent success offensively is too strong to ignore: if Longshore, especially, is healthy and has his teammates’ confidence, this is still a unit that can average in the low 30s. The Bears have two of the league’s most interesting, potentially season-defining non-conference games in September, against Michigan State and at Maryland, with likely victim Washington State in between. If Cal can start 3-0, take three of four against Arizona State, Arizona, UCLA and Oregon, and head into USC at 7-1, the dropoff in degree of difficulty at the end of the schedule offers a fine chance for BCS contention at 10-2. That seems like extreme optimism for a team with so many questions on offense, but beyond the Trojans, there’s nobody that should beat Cal -- these guys were No. 2 in the country as late as October, and if the pieces fall into place, it could shape up as a hell of a rejuvenation job.

Worst-Case. It’s very easy to think "Cal’s always good on offense" and overlook the total death of reliable playmakers; after one great year and a couple good ones, the defense looks like it’s back in the mire for the foreseeable future. There’s really only one ‘break’ in the first ten games, against Colorado State at the end of September. Assuming Cal wins that, it could still be just a 2-2 afterthought hitting the meat of the conference schedule, which is uncommonly tough to predict, and therefore potentially brutal. Through the next six games -- Arizona State, Arizona, UCLA, Oregon, USC and Oregon State -- it’s easy to see the Bears going 2-4, limping into the final two against Stanford and Washington just hoping to eke out bowl eligibility, drop another one to one of the up-and-comers and have to endure the longest offseason here in seven or eight years. That may seem a little extreme, but as high as I was on the Bears’ potential a couple years ago, the pendulum has definitely swung.

Non-Binding Forecast. The shine is definitely off here; the Bears look like just another team in the middle of a very crowded pack in a parity-driven conference that offers up five to six toss-up games, even before factoring in the Michigan State-Maryland gambit in September. Minus a couple fairly obvious games as buffers (a win over Colorado State, a loss at Southern Cal), the schedule breaks down according to three distinct sections: Michigan State-Washington State-Maryland (that looks like a 2-1 start), Arizona State-Arizona-UCLA-Oregon (the Bears might be lucky to split that run) and Oregon State-Stanford-Washington to close. If they beat everyone they’re supposed to beat, including a 3-0 finish against teams they were 0-3 against last year, this looks like an 8-4 kind of season; if there’s another stumble along the way to an Arizona or Washington, it could be 7-5. But unless the defense is hugely improved and a really sound, consistent running game emerges behind Best, there’s no great leap forward.

Writers of all stripes are generally in the business of being right, or of convincing readers they're right, or explaining why they should have been right, if only voters or executives or armies or the unfathomable circuitry of the universe had hewn to the prescribed course. These are the instincts of ego and self-preservation at their finest.

Rarely, then, will you find anyone as satisfied to be wrong about anything as I am a little more than a year after lamenting the death of the triple option in major college football. Then, the old bone-based ways of Ken Hatfield and Fisher DeBerry were ostensibly in the dustbin; Army remained committed to a vaguely "pro style," West Coast-ish version of "balance"; Nebraska's classic power I -- which occasionally incorporated an element of wishbone, and was always faithful to its principles -- was jettisoned for the lifeless short passing game of an NFL reject; sole practitioner Paul Johnson, passed over for marquee jobs in the annual coaching melee of 2006, seemed either confined to the Naval Academy or bound to divorce his beloved Flexbone in search of a flashier gig; and when asked about retaining DeBerry's system after four years of diminishing returns at Air Force, Troy Calhoun was making unambiguous overtures to the necessity of a "very effective passing game" and forcing opponents to "defend the entire field." The Falcons' depth chart listed two regular wide receivers for the first time in decades.

And thus, spake I, descended the curtain on one of the defining innovations of modern football, an aesthetic and tactical pleasure that separated often overmatched amateurs from the ruthlessly homogenous pros and made careers of coaches, quarterbacks and, occasionally, entire teams no one expected to succeed by any other means. Among those who could have succeeded any way they wanted, Bear Bryant, Darrell Royal, Bill McCartney, Lou Holtz and Tom Osborne won mythical championships with various versions of the triple option. But time marches on and old gimmicks fall in its path.

Or something like that. At least I left myself a little rope by admitting, "in the eternal cycle of strategic push and pull, of course, nothing ever just goes away," and so, it seems, the triple option that proliferated from the mid-sixties to mid-nineties has not. Air Force's "new look" resulted in runs on 77 percent of its snaps, produced the Mountain West's leading rusher and offensive player of the year from one of its "wide receiver" positions, finished second in the conference in scoring and led to nine wins for the first time since 2000; Navy led the nation in rushing for the third year in a row and came within a yard per game of matching 2000 Nebraska for the best per-game average of the decade -- despite running a staggering 86 percent of the time, the Midshipmen were also third in yards per carry, just behind the much bigger/faster/stronger, draft-bound, two-headed monsters at Arkansas and West Virginia. Compared to this time last year, the old, non-spread triple option is actually stronger, and expanding: Army, weary of eight years of option-based beatings from the other academies since it scrapped the system in 2000, apparently spent the spring re-installing a super secret version of the wishbone the Knights ran back when they occasionally won the Commander-In-Chief series.

Even more importantly, Johnson begins the experimental odyssey of transplanting the flexbone to one of the major conferences, where the triple option's immediate future may again be in his hands -- the current promulgation of the spread/spread option was based on the early, experimental success of Randy Walker, Joe Tiller, Hal Mumme, Mike Leach and Rich Rodriguez at schools with serious deficits in talent, much like Georgia Tech's in relation to the rest of the ACC and the BCS leagues as a whole. This is part of the same cyclical struggle: as the optimal window begins to close on the subversive deception of the spread and spread option, the great talent-maskers of the last two decades, the pendulum will begin to swing the other way -- while Texas, Florida, Michigan, Auburn a cavalcade of first-rate recruiting powers are taking the "defend the entire field and the running quarterback" concept mainstream, less talented teams that relied on surprising defenses with the unfamiliar week after week must begin looking for a new edge. Maybe Johnson's aggressive, high-scoring version of the old bone concept is it; maybe he can't get away with leaving faster, more disciplined defenders unblocked the way the Midshipmen could against second and third-tier defenses. Either way -- for now, at least -- your father's option still has legs, after all.

Courtesy the creatively-paired Jim Mora, it’s your annual wake-up call from more-competent-than-you-think college officials:

Dennis Dodd, bored like the rest of us, did this thing last week where he took the test offered to officials by USA Football. It’s 100 extremely detailed questions about spotting, penalties and clock rules, and it’s a bitch. Dodd made a pretty dreadful 46; I came in at 55, which -- while twice as good as Dan Marino’s score, according to Dodd -- is still extreme failure by the standards of any class I took following remedial freshman algebra. What can I say? I couldn’t get my mind around the various formulas relating to slope and I’m soft on taunting.

I would like to say that, among my 45 incorrect answers, the rule referenced included the term "exception" three times. So it was close to a 58. Real officials take this test, and presumably navigate the intricacies much more effectively. For the layman, though, there’s really only one obvious question, and even that has nothing to do with anyone’s consumption of the rulebook:

54. 2nd an 8 @ A’s 38. Team A QB takes the snap and stumbles. The ball comes loose when the QB attempts to maintain his balance by holding the ball on the ground on A’s 32. Team B defensive tackle recovers on A’s 34 while grounded.

  __ A. A 3rd and 2 @ A’s 32.
  __ B. B 1st and 10 @ A’s 34.

Who might be my best option for a lifeline on that one? I wonder...

Continue reading this post »

Heading out of town for the holiday weekend, but before I blow this joint for a few days, I’m opening up the floor: next week will be the last week of the Absurdly Premature/Reasonably Anticipatory preview series before the serious, on-record predictin’ begins in earnest, and in the venerable SMQ tradition, I’m dedicating the week to the masses.

Previously, all previews have been carefully but randomly selected from slips of paper in the Official Giraffe-Themed Pencilholder of SMQ, which resides next to the Official Mr. T Bobblehead of SMQ. In truly benevolent fashion, however, next week’s Somewhat Obligatory previews will be decided by popular vote -- since there are several dozen teams remaining, a poll would be rather unwieldy, but partisans may leave votes in the comments below for their team (or, maybe more helpfully, an unfamiliar or otherwise mysterious opponent), or they can e-mail at: sundaymorningqb -at- y@h00, etc. Comments are preferred.

The field isn’t wide open. The following teams have been Absurdly/Reasonably previewed since March and are therefore ineligible (formatting from the old server (anything prior to May 9) may be slightly screwy in some places, but only slightly; many apologies for lost paragraph breaks):

Continue reading this post »

A too-soon look at next fall, sans the inevitable injuries, suspensions and other pratfalls of the long offseason.
- - -

What’s Changed. The defense was awash last year with "senior leadership," at both ends, both corners and two of the three linebacker spots, and generally played like a veteran group is supposed to: the Hawkeyes were 18th nationally in points allowed, and even removing the meager three points allowed bottom-dwellers Northern Illinois and Syracuse in the first two games only allowed a respectable 22.4 per game to Big Ten offenses, including holding Illinois to six (thank you, illegal formation) and somehow winning an overtime game against Michigan State despite a 5-for-15 passing day by Jake Christensen (see below). I watched all of the upset over Illinois, and in that game, at least, the Hawks were disciplined, aggressive and completely intolerant of the Illini option.

The least you should know about Iowa...

2007 Record • Past Five Years

2007: 6-6 (4-4 Big Ten, T-4th) 2003-07: 39-23 (23-17 Big Ten)

Five-Year Recruiting Rankings*-

2004-08: 38 • 11 • 40 • 28 • 53

Returning Starters, Roughly

13 (8 Offense, 5 Defense)

Best Player

Mitch King is extremely productive for an interior lineman, with a linebacker-like 114 tackles in two years and 26.5 tackles for loss. King has started almost every game the last three years, was the Hawkeyes’ only first-team all-Big Ten pick by the coaches in ‘07 and is the key to a much younger supporting cast holding up in any serious way against the run.

Cultural Studies Department

For a bit of nonsense with The Last of the Mohicans in 1826. For no apparent reason, a judge and a newspaper editor who changed his paper’s name to the "Burlington Hawkeye" successfully lobbied to apply the nickname to Iowa in the 1840s. From the book and newspaper (which still exists) were spawned a Marvel comics character, an affable yet iconically cynical movie/TV doctor, an ethanol company, a software company, a line of all-terrain vehicle and a NASA spacecraft, among other things. So who says James Fenimore Cooper isn’t relevant?

- - - * According to Rivals.

Of course, the same group allowed 38 to Indiana, 31 to Purdue and 28 to Western Michigan in ugly losses, and it gets significantly younger -- five of the six vacant positions are expected to be filled by sophomores, with another sophomore (Brett Greenwood) returning at free safety and a pair of young ‘uns, Lance Tillison and Tyler Sash, supposedly pushing senior Harold Dalton at strong safety. The new guys have done nothing, but the vibes are not all bad, talent wise. Both new ends (Adrian Clayborn and converted tight end Christian Ballard) and corner Jordan Bernstine were all four star prospects. The linebackers should definitely miss active and impressively-named Mike Klinkenborg and Mike Humpalm and Clayborn and Ballard are only likely to hold the line for Bryan Mattison and Kenny Iwebema, but Bernstine was Rivals’ No. 3 incoming corner last year, which should be a clear upgrade by the end of the year over outgoing, three-year target Adam Shada.

What’s the Same. One thing you can say about Jake Christensen: the kid knows how to throw a ball a ball out of bounds. He was only intercepted six times, fewest in the Big Ten, against a relatively impressive 17 touchdowns. When one can achieve a nearly 3:1 TD:INT ratio and still finish last among regular starters in the conference in pass efficiency, he’s reaching entirely new levels of every-down frustration. Christensen only completed 53 percent of his passes, last in the Big Ten, for about 6.1 per attempt, also last.

To be fair, he didn’t have a lot of choices -- not only were his best receivers, Andy Brodell and tight end Tony Moeaki, injured most of the year, and the leftovers mediocre at best, but Christensen was lumbering for his life on a near-constant basis. Last we checked, Iowa’s offensive line was the pride of the team, but it hit rock-bottom last year by allowing a league-worst 46 sacks, mostly in some pretty ugly clusters: Iowa State had four, Wisconsin had four, Indiana (!) had eight, Penn State had five, Purdue had five, Northwestern had six, Western Michigan had four and even lame duck Minnesota managed three. Hawkeye partisans may recognize their team’s record in those games: 2-6. And when the sack totals are that high, the actual number of "pressure" situations, when most turnovers and other bad decisions go down, is much higher. On the rare occasions they protected Christensen, he didn’t always play well -- certainly not against Michigan State, or against Illinois, when the offense scored only ten -- but he didn’t make terrible mistakes that cost the game. Even if most sacks are really the quarterback's fault, the buck for the lowest-gaining, lowest-scoring offense in the conference has to stop up front.

Obviously, this group cannot possibly be worse. Five starters return, technically, plus two part-time starters, but concluding from highly scientific examination of the school’s own spring depth chart and the two-deep in Athlon, the only secure position on the line is that of senior right guard Seth Olsen; sophomore Brian Bulaga seems likely at one tackle or the other. The other positions are all apparently in the air. As they say: in this context, when you have eight linemen, you really have none.

Not to Jinx Them or Anything... As far as I can tell, no Hawkeye was arrested in the month of June, a tremendous achievement given the team’s well-chronicled, 1.000 per-month average in arrests since April 2007. In the fifteen months hence, 16 different Hawkeyes (nearly one in five of available scholarship players) were hit with charges of varying seriousness. Disregarding three boys-will-be-boys arrests for underage drinking, we have: Ryan Bain (disorderly conduct*); straight hustlin’ ballas Domonique Douglas (credit card fraud, public intoxication) and Anthony Bowman (credit card fraud), Dana Brown (domestic assault); James Cleveland (illegal prescription drugs), Ben Evans (drunken driving); Cedric Everson (second-degree sexual abuse); Bradley Fletcher (drunken driving); Clint Huntrods (public intoxication); Arvell Nelson (marijuana, drug tax stamp violation (? -- see here)); Abe Satterfield (second and third-degree sexual abuse); and Lance Tillison (drunken driving). That looks like the final tally -- for now. The incident involving Everson and Satterfield started making the rounds along with a mildly incriminating hip hop video in October, but they were just arrested in late May, so the "Days Without a New Legal Embarrassment" calendar is not that far along.

The overall thinning of the roster goes well beyond legal attrition, though: of the 67 players Iowa signed from 2005-07, twenty-one weren’t listed on the spring roster -- almost one in three -- and only five of that number were part of the team’s mini-spree. The 2005 class, in particular, is notorious in its nearly crime-free disappointment. That year’s haul, off the unlikely back-to-back-to-back co-conference championship seasons from 2002-05, was the eleventh-best in the country according to Rivals, the only nationally competitive class Iowa has signed in decades. Very little has gone right since, on or off the field. Entering year four, a little less than half of the ‘05 recruits (11 of 23) remain on the roster; only about half of those are on the official two-deep, and only three are listed as starters (four if you count guard Dan Doering, who the school lists as either/or to start against ‘06 signee Julian Vandervelde). If you were wondering what happened here after 2004, "four out of twenty-four" is a pretty good shorthand.

Overly Optimistic Increasingly Desperate Post-Spring Chatter. Even if he was still a walk-on, even if he was still pigmentally-challenged, Iowa’s running back situation wouldn’t seem to be in such dire straits if the starter at the end of the spring wasn’t actually named "Paki O’Meara." Yes, he sounds like a particularly racist St. Patrick’s Day mascot, but it’s not a joke: at least until a couple moderately-touted freshmen get to campus, there’s nowhere else to turn. Presumptive favorite Jevon Pugh left the team in April to go back to Florida; sometimes-mentioned candidate Shonn Greene has not returned to the team from a year in academic purgatory and would-be JUCO messiah Nate Guillory "had no idea what he was doing" in his first practices, according to Kirk Ferentz, especially when it comes to blocking. So, uh, Paki it is.

Even Iowans who survived the great running back massacre of 2004 can’t feign optimism about this. The presumably objective "Hawkmania" section of the Quad City Times made no attempt to sugarcoat the cold, hard truth in April:

It looks as if the starter for now might be Paki O’Meara.

Contain your enthusiasm.
[...]
The sophomore walk-on from Cedar Rapids Washington, who never has carried the ball in a college game, received this ringing endorsement from Ferentz: "If we have to go with him in the fall, we will.’’

A few seconds later he piled on even more praise: "Obviously, we’re hoping we’ll be able to supplement him with other players in the fall.’’
- - -

To which the somewhat less objective Black Heart, Gold Pants responded, understandably:

Our horror cup overfloweth.
- - -

Jake Christensen supplied by far the most diplomatic assessment of an O’Meara-led backfield:

"Paki is more of a power guy. He's a good leader, a real strong player who is good at pass protection and catching the ball out of the backfield."
- - -

I.e., he’s exactly what you’d expect: an undersized, back-up fullback best suited to special teams.

Not helping matters was the offensive line, whose status remained on ‘shuffle’ thanks to shoulder injuries to Olsen and Bulaga and various ailments to fellow starting candidates Dace Richardson, Rob Bruggeman and Rafael Eubanks, all of whom missed the competition.

Iowa on You Tube. Glory days! Fry! Shembechler! It’s a nailbiter in 1985 as No. 1 Iowa trails No. 2 Michigan, 10-9, with seconds to go, called by, well, guess who:

Gotta love Hayden Fry, the Father Abraham of modern college football. That team was the best he ever coached at Iowa -- it was the second of his three Rose Bowl trips -- but alas, the glory of the top spot wouldn’t last.

See Also: The famous University of Iowa Scottish Highlanders in their hey day. ... The campus prepares for the flooding earlier this month, to little effect. ... Tim Dwight in the second leg of the 1999 NCAA 4X400 Relays. ... And Hayden Fry’s own mini-Mike Gundy moment.

Best-Case: Four of the first five games are at home, all of them likely wins: Maine, Florida International, Iowa State and Northwestern. The toss-up in that first month is an intriguing trip to Pittsburgh, a real rubber match for both teams’ prospects. A 5-0 start is not at all out of the question before back-to-back road games at Michigan State and Indiana, where the Hawkeyes should be looking for a split to earn bowl eligibility before the toughest stretch of the year, against Wisconsin, Illinois and Penn State. Two of those (Wisconsin and PSU) are in Iowa City, but all three are probable losses before a chance to finish strong against Purdue and Minnesota. The defense should be fine -- not great in the vein of the Hodge-Greenway-Sanders units, but good enough if the line improves and the skill guys stay healthy to plug away at eight wins and one of the league’s middle tier bowls (Alamo, Champs Sports, Insight).

Worst-Case: Ferentz’s teams are just 3-3 against Iowa State since 2002 and seem to consistently play down to the Cyclones; back-to-back disappointments against ISU and Pitt could set a very bad standard entering the Big Ten schedule. If Iowa happens to drop two of three against Northwestern, Michigan State and Indiana, the season becomes a real nightmare on the order of the 2-6 conference finish in 2006; even at 3-5, another losing record will certainly lure Torch ‘n Pitchforks ‘R Us to the lot down the road from the Ferenzt estate.

Non-Binding Forecast: The Lukewarm Seat or Bust. I have to apply here what I usually refer to as the "Purdue Rule," based on the unusually high expectations for the Boilermakers’ Michigan-and-Ohio State-free schedule in 2005: when the best thing you have to say about a team is which other, better teams it doesn’t play, that is not a team worth endorsing. Iowa misses the Wolverines and Buckeyes for the second year in a row; like last year, this anomaly (especially as it relates to rebuilding Michigan) is to be ignored completely. As I say, five games look like toss-ups, and the Pitt-Northwestern-Michigan State-Indiana stretch will define the direction of the season -- assuming they win the three before that, and lose the three after that, a 2-2 split there and another split against Purdue and Minnesota at the end leaves another unsatisfying, 6-6 collection of meh.<p>

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* Ryan Bain's charge was originally listed (inaccurately) as "drunken driving," per the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The correct charge was disorderly conduct.